Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen (9 November 1873 – 8 February 1951) was a German businessman, born into one of Germany's leading industrial families. He was an early supporter of the Nazi Party but later broke with it.
Biography
Youth
Thyssen was born in Mülheim in the Ruhr area. His father, August, was head of the Thyssen mining and steelmaking company, founded by his father Friedrich and based in the Ruhr city of Duisburg. Friedrich studied mining and metallurgy in London, Liège, and Berlin, and after a short period in the German Army, joined the family business. On 18 January 1900 in Düsseldorf he married Amelie Helle or Zurhelle (Mülheim am Rhein, 11 December 1877 – Puchdorf bei Straubing, 25 August 1965), daughter of a factory owner. Their only child, Anna (Anita; later Anita Gräfin Zichy-Thyssen), was born in 1909. Thyssen again joined the army in 1914, but was soon discharged on account of a lung condition.
Weimar Germany
Thyssen was a German nationalist who supported Nazism, believing that limited government control of production and ownership of banking and transportation was a means of preventing the spread of full-fledged communism. In 1923, when French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr to punish Germany for not meeting its reparations payments in full, he took part in the nationalist resistance against the occupiers, leading the Ruhr steelmakers in refusing to co-operate in producing coal and steel for them. He was arrested, imprisoned and received a large fine for his activities, which made him a national hero. Through the 1920s, the Thyssen companies continued to expand. Thyssen took over the Thyssen companies on his father's death in 1926, and that same year he formed United Steelworks (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG), controlling more than 75 percent of Germany's iron ore reserves and employing 200,000 people. He played a prominent role in German commercial life, as head of the German Iron and Steel Industry Association and the Reich Association of German Industry, and as a board member of the Reichsbank.
In 1923, Thyssen met former general Erich Ludendorff, who advised him to attend a speech given by Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party. Thyssen was impressed by Hitler and his bitter opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, and began to make large donations to the party, including 100,000 gold marks ($25,000) in 1923 to Ludendorff. In this he was unusual among German business leaders, as most were traditional conservatives who regarded the Nazis with suspicion. Thyssen's principal motive in supporting the Nazis was his great fear of communism; he had little confidence that the various German anti-communist factions would prevent a Soviet-style revolution in Germany unless the popular appeal of communism among the lower classes was co-opted by an anticommunist alternative. Postwar investigators found that he had donated to right-wing parties, mostly to the Nazis, although Thyssen himself claimed to have donated to the Nazi Party. Thyssen remained a member of the German National People's Party until 1932 and did not join the Nazi Party until 1933.
In November, 1932, Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht were the main organisers of a letter to President Paul von Hindenburg to urge him to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Thyssen also persuaded the Association of German Industrialists to donate three million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the March 1933 Reichstag election. As a reward, he was selected to run as a Nazi candidate in the election, was elected to the Reichstag and subsequently was appointed to the Council of State of Prussia, the largest German state.
In 1933, the artist John Heartfield depicted Thyssen as the puppetmaster manipulating Hitler on the cover of communist magazine Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ, Workers' Illustrated Newspaper).
Nazi Germany
Thyssen welcomed the Nazi suppression of leftist organisations such as the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and trade unions. In 1934, he was one of the business leaders who persuaded Hitler to suppress the SA, leading to the "Night of the Long Knives".